The BRIDGES project is a UK e-Science project that provides grid based support for biomedical research into the genetics of hypertension – the Cardiovascular Functional Genomics Project (CFG). Its main goal is to provide an effective environment for CFG, and biomedical research in general, including access to integrated data, analysis and visualization, with appropriate authorisation and privacy, as well as grid based computational tools and resources. It also aims to provide an improved understanding of the requirements of academic biomedical research virtual organizations and to evaluate the utility of existing data federation tools.